The excitement for the long awaited arrival of inexpensive Virtual Reality has been growing since the success of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. Cadenza was one of the backers, and I've been experimenting
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This article will help you in creating the layout of a level in the Sol Survivor Editor. If you need help getting started, check out the previous Getting Started post.

Terrain Generation

The Sol Survivor Editor uses rather unique terrain sculpting system. The Terrain is random, but you still have some controls to get it to behave how you want. We are going to start with Terrain Generation.

The terrain panel gives you the ability to create Terrain Nodes which push and pull at the terrain to create features where you want them. It also allows you to modify the generation parameters for the random terrain. Lets take a look at what each of these controls do:

Terrain Node Controls

Terrain Node – Create: Clicking creates a new terrain node under the mouse.

The Sol Survivor Editor FAQ is a work in progress. I am posting this Getting Started guide to help people dive in. If you have questions, please post them in the Steam Forums and I will reply there and update this post.

Getting Started

1. Locate Improv.exe in the Steam Game Directory

2. From the Entities Box, right click on the SolSurvivorEditor project and select Add New Entity

3. Name your new level, don't use any special case characters

4. Double click the level in the Entities list to open the Level Editor

Setting up your Level

Change the Environment type to one of the four possible choices. The Terrain will not generate under the Layout Tab until an Environment is selected.

Choose a Game Mode.

Survival and Wars do not require that you setup any Waves

All other game modes need you to setup the Waves that will attack the player in the Waves Tab

The next step

The excitement for the long awaited arrival of inexpensive Virtual Reality has been growing since the success of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. Cadenza was one of the backers, and I've been experimenting with a Rift development unit for about a month now. It presents a fantastic view into game worlds, complete with a new set of challenges to overcome.

The quality of the Rift device itself is very high for a development unit. It's origins as a cell phone screen taped to ski goggles is still apparent, but the solid plastic frame and quick setup go a long way to communicate that Oculus is serious about putting these in the hands of gamers. Importantly, it's comfortable to wear and can be used with headphones. The Rift is so lightweight that it's barely noticeable. Though after extended use and one's neck is beginning to feel the extra effort of looking around, it's understandable why Oculus is working to shave off grams.

The most noticeable limitation is the low resolution. Spreading 720p over a wide field of view results in very large pixels. Oculus has already demonstrated a 1080p version at E3 this year, so it's really only a concern with these early units. The combination of low latency sensors and some fancy math behind the scenes results in very convincing head tracking. Testing on demos that poorly scale the view or buffer frames has brought on some motion sickness in minutes. But I've been able to play for hours in games with proper care given to their Rift integration. Experimenting with new demos can feel a bit like astronaut training.

The SDK comes complete with source code and samples. Simple games could get up and running with the Rift in hours, while more complex games will require more effort to integrate. I'll go into detail on how we added Oculus Rift support to Retrovirus in the next post.